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The direct inhibition of DNA mismatch repair by cadmium provides a molecular mechanism for cadmium toxicity with profound implications for human health, risk assessment and biological understanding of environmental mutagens. Alteration of key DNA damage response pathways may prove even more important than direct DNA damage by mutagens.
Adeno-associated virus (AAV) holds much promise as a vector for gene therapy. Although transgene expression usually occurs from extrachromosomal vector genomes, vectors occasionally integrate into the host genome. A new study in normal mammalian cells shows that the insertions are associated with genomic deletions and occur preferentially in actively transcribed genes.
An analysis of the propinquity of selected gene loci in the nuclei of a particular lymphoblastoid cell line has identified a statistical correlation with their propensity for oncogenic translocations.
Muscle mitochondrial respiratory metabolism is reduced in aging and diabetes. Now, coordinated changes in expression of genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation have been found in individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2). Peroxisome proliferator activator protein-γ co-activator-1α (PGC-1α) seems to be in charge of this orchestrated change in gene expression.
The human Y chromosome is the first constitutively haploid metazoan chromosome to be sequenced. It has a unique genomic landscape with a complex evolutionary history that has endowed it with few genes but many nearly identical dispersed repeats that underlie the structural fluidity of this unusual chromosome.
